Building Blocks of Parenting

The Building Blocks of Parenting (BBP) App provides parents with anytime/anywhere access to strategies and activities they can use with their child to support academic and life success. The BBP App incorporates six areas of parenting that are essential to effective family functioning. These six areas of family functioning are based on the latest research on promoting positive educational and life outcomes: Finding basic needs, building a support network, strengthening your family, helping your child learn, understanding your child’s development, supporting your child at school. Within the app, each building block (area of parenting) is associated with specific engagement strategies and related parent/child activities. When a user clicks on Building Block 1, for example, three strategies display: 1) I praise my children for their efforts so they don’t give up. 2) I teach my children that you can learn a lot from mistakes. 3) I explain to my children that they have to do their best, in and out of school. If the user clicks Strategy 2, “I teach my children that you can learn a lot from mistakes,” one suggested activity is the parent telling the child after they’ve made a mistake, “That didn’t work out the way you planned, did it? I can tell you’re disappointed, but I know you’ll try again next week. What do you think you might do differently next time?”

A unique feature of the BBP App is the “mindset builders.” Mindset builders are self-affirmation exercises that help parents get into the right frame of mind to fully engage with their child and the activity. For example, if a parent is going to do an activity with their child to help them learn that it’s OK to make mistakes, the parent may be asked to think of a situation when they made a mistake, what they learned from it, and what they did differently afterward. We live in a distracted world. Mindset builders help parents focus for a more intentional and meaningful interaction with their child.

Another important feature is the “My Child” section. Under this section, parents can create a unique profile for each child and track their developmental milestones. In addition, this app provides user with a platform to communicate with each other to ask questions, share their experience, and build a support system through the “Parent Forum.” Users can also choose to receive push notifications that remind and encourage them to engage with their children. These text messages are sent weekly through the app to keep users (parents) engaged and suggest everyday opportunities they can use to engage with their child. One example is, “Engage your child in sorting activities at home. You can sort laundry by color, dishes by type, foods by color, talk about similarities and differences between objects, the possibilities are endless.”